Microwave-optical spectroscopy of Rydberg excitons in the ultrastrong driving regime

We study the ultrastrong driving of Rydberg excitons in Cu₂O by a microwave field. The effect of the microwaves was studied using optical absorption specstroscopy, and via the observation of sidebands on the transmitted laser light. A model based on Floquet theory was constructed to explore the system beyond the rotating wave approximation. We obtain near quantitative agreement between theory and experiment across a 16-fold range of microwave field strength, from 43.5± 0.3 V m⁻¹ up to 688 ± 5 V m⁻¹, crossing from the perturbative to the ultrastrong driving regime. Compared to Rydberg atoms, the large non-radiative width of Rydberg exctions leads to new behaviour such as the emergence of an absoprtion continuum without ionization.